Greetings,

My wife and I are relocating (from Texas) to Central NJ (Morris County)
and have elected to build our home.

One of the things that we have noticed in our search of the area is the
presence of rooms referred to as "Conservatories". They seem to be
rather prevalent in the area. When I asked my builder (16 new home
neighborhood), she indicated that roughly 2/3 of the new builds in the
development were electing to add the Conservatory. This is not
something that we see very much of here in Texas therefore it was
somewhat new to us. Additionally, it seems to be a room that will have
marginal utility (based upon our lack of experience with it).

The questions we have a

A) Is this an option that we should go ahead and do since it seems
fairly popular in the area?

B) Will NOT building a Conservatory cause us to be sorry later (i.e.
negative impact on resale, loss of a truly valuable room, etc.)?

C) Is it worth the return (i.e. cost to build relative to the value it
adds to the house)?

One of the things that we are considering is adding a closet and full
bathroom off of the Conservatory (if we elect to build) so that it
could conceivably be used as another (first floor) bedroom. Also, if
you finish the basement, you do get the additionnal "square footage" of
the Conservatory added to basement footprint (which could be used to
build out a media room, office or exercise room, etc.). We are
finishing our basement and are in the final "selections" process. Given
the seeming endless dollars that we have spent on upgrades already
(many of which we followed advice from a previous thread from this
group), the Conservatory is "up in the air".

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thanks. - Lee

sprtan wrote:
Greetings,

My wife and I are relocating (from Texas) to Central NJ (Morris County)
and have elected to build our home.

One of the things that we have noticed in our search of the area is the
presence of rooms referred to as "Conservatories". They seem to be
rather prevalent in the area. When I asked my builder (16 new home
neighborhood), she indicated that roughly 2/3 of the new builds in the
development were electing to add the Conservatory. This is not
something that we see very much of here in Texas therefore it was
somewhat new to us. Additionally, it seems to be a room that will have
marginal utility (based upon our lack of experience with it).

The questions we have a

A) Is this an option that we should go ahead and do since it seems
fairly popular in the area?

Anything "new" is popular in NJ, esp good for the builder. So everybody
seems to be pushed by the builder to get more room. e.g Sun room off
the kitchen, reading room off the master BR, etc.

B) Will NOT building a Conservatory cause us to be sorry later (i.e.
negative impact on resale, loss of a truly valuable room, etc.)?

Builders market a conservatory as a room to do some reading, knitting,
etc. Whatever happened to the family room? Living room? Its as if one
should have a room for each activity/interest.

C) Is it worth the return (i.e. cost to build relative to the value it
adds to the house)?
This is entirely up to you. I don't have one, although both houses on
either side of me do. I have a full basement already, so the space
under the conservatory won't add substantially more. Both my neighbors
use their conservatory as TV rooms with a bigscreen TV and sofas. The
family room has another set of of sofas with a smaller TV! Some people
I know use this as a gam e room (pool table, etc).

One of the things that we are considering is adding a closet and full
bathroom off of the Conservatory (if we elect to build) so that it
could conceivably be used as another (first floor) bedroom. Also, if
you finish the basement, you do get the additionnal "square footage" of
the Conservatory added to basement footprint (which could be used to
build out a media room, office or exercise room, etc.). We are
finishing our basement and are in the final "selections" process. Given
the seeming endless dollars that we have spent on upgrades already
(many of which we followed advice from a previous thread from this
group), the Conservatory is "up in the air".

Again, entirely your call. Yes, it would add some to the value of the
house. Conservatories cost around $20-30K. This adds about $15k to the
value of house.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thanks. - Lee

-Mark Sabatini

Thanks for the insight.

Interestingly, I had my realtor do a quick pull of listings in the area
that I am building in the same price range. I wanted to get a feel for
what square footage and room count was typically found in that category
of house to get a point of reference on the conservatory.

Most of the homes in this category were new build or recent builds.
Square footage wise, it would put me towards the upper end. As for the
bedroom count (assuming the conservatory/bedroom option build), they
were about half and half.

So, based upon the above, it would truly seem to be buyer's preference.
- Lee